S. Worthen | Weblog

Monday
Two ticket sellers are utterly convinced that the Network Rail discount card is valid before 10 am on the High Speed trains. I give in and buy a Network Rail card.

This morning
Two more ticket sellers are utterly convinced that this is so. I waver and buy that 1/3 off ticket for a 6:47 am train. Which is before 10 am.

I ask a fifth ticket seller and he disagrees. He says that those first four ticket sellers were poorly trained and misled by the options on their Portable Ticket Machines. On the other hand, he refuses to sell me a top-up ticket, telling me to ask the on-board ticket inspector to make sure it's really not valid.

On the morning train: For the first time ever on a high speed train, there is no ticket inspector. There are no inspectors at Canterbury. The gates are open. I have arrived in Canterbury for a discount of more than £10 on the usual ticket price.

This afternoon
By now it's after 10 am, so my ticket is clearly valid. There IS a ticket inspector on my train home. He's fairly sure that, as per all text printed everywhere, the Network Rail card cannot be used before 10 am. On the other hand, he then goes to double-check this with his colleague, just in case he's wrong. His colleague agrees.

This makes a total of 4 Southeastern Rail employees who are sure it IS valid and 3 who are sure it is NOT valid. The majority still hold otherwise, but I'd err on the side of the ticket inspectors and buy the full price ticket next time.

The hilarity of it is, I know those ticket sellers will all try hard to sell me a discount ticket; I shall have to protest their attempts to save me money. Worse, they're more likely to recognize me as someone who has a discount card since they've all talked to me at length about it. On the bright side, my knowledge was obtained at a £10 discount.

Network rail discount cards are not valid before 10 am. It says so on the posters. It says so on the pamphlets. It says so on website.

I was on the 6:25-ish am bus this morning between the two Stratford stations, and the Guy with the Portable Ticket Machine (GwtPTM) wanted me to buy my tickets then-and-there rather than waiting for the station. Justifying his job, perhaps? In any event, he asked the usual questions. "Destination? Day return?" and then "Network railcard?".

Me: "But they're not valid before 10 am."
GwtPTM: "I think you could use one earlier, but there's a minimum price."
Me: "Really? I would love that. Are you sure?"
GwtPTM: "Maybe you should ask at the station to be sure."

Later, I'm back at Stratford International, a decadently tranquil station with very few customers and lots of service. (This won't last.) It's after 7 pm and, as usual, it's quiet. I go to ask the Guy with the Cash Register (GwtCR) about the tantalizing lure of an improbable Network rail card.

Me: "I was under the impression that Network rail cards are not valid before 10 am."
GwtCR, heartily: "That's right!"
Me: "But the GwtPTM this morning said I could get one for my 6-something am commute."
GwtCT: "You can use them, but there's a minimum charge." *checks out minimum charge for my route-of-choice*
GwtCT: "The minimum charge is £13*. If you bought a Network rail card, you'd save a third on your morning trip."
Me: "Even though it's not valid before 10 am?"
GwtCT: "There's a minimum charge."
(As opposed to what - free trips after 10 am? Not that I've heard of.)

I bought the railcard. It says in clear, sharp letters, "Not valid before 10 am."

I'll find out on Thursday if I've just saved myself large sums of money or thrown away £25. After all, I'll be traveling before 10 am.

Be careful in choosing your major research projects. My PhD dissertation dealt with windmills, sandglasses, and mechanical clocks, and friends and family have been giving me instances of all of them ever since. (It dealt with eyeglasses too; strangely, no one has given me any of those.) I realized long ago that - whether or not I even wanted to - I should never, ever publish a book on the history of garden gnomes. It would doom me to receive them as gifts for the rest of my life. If you had somehow missed the ubiquity of these objects in my life - not garden gnomes, the others - then it might not be clear what was part of the inspiration for what happened a week ago.

A week ago, easterbunny challenged nineteen of us volunteers to collect specific things over the course of one week. My assignment was this: "Tell me about every London (or Paris) windmill - old, new-fangled, pub name, streetname, unexpected presence in a painting or photo - that you see in the next week."

I've liberally applied my instructions to all kinds of mills, wind-powered or not.

( The London Collection... )

( The Paris Collection... )

No, the Cotswolds could in no way be considered part of the West Country, but nevertheless we stopped there on the same trip, a halfway point between Preston and Cornwall. Night had fallen by the time we pulled off of the motorway, and traced our route down A roads until we reached The Rectory Hotel in the village of Crudwell. The church next door rang the hours late into the evening as we lingered over our first dinner of the trip. Crudwell is a commuter town - it has three hotels and, as far as we could determine, no useful shops whatsoever.

The next morning, we drove deeper into the Cotswolds, choosing our destinations for convenience, for whim, and for guide book recommendations. This brought us first to the lovely village of Quenington, where the church of St. Swithin lies in the bend of the road near the banks of the tamely murmuring Coln. Four pheasants strolled daintily through the vegetable garden next door before taking fright. The lure of Quenington is the church doors there; not even the church itself, which was just as well, since the church was locked. The north and south doors are framed by impressively well-preserved Norman arches, one Harrowing of Hell and one Coronation of the Virgin. Porches guarded against active rain damage.

Fairford is a full-fledged town, for it had a substantial complement of useful shops and a free town-owned parking lot. Fairford prospered as a wool town in the Middle Ages, and the riches which came with it went, in part, to the building and ornamentation of the church of St. Mary's, which today apparently has the largest surviving set of medieval stained glass windows. They certainly are an impressive set, nearly complete, with the exception of some damage done to a few by a eighteenth-century windstorm. Above, the Bible's bad guys stared down, each attended by their own personal demon in the tracery above them. Below, there were a handful of vignettes, beginning with Eve, but far more full-length portraits of Biblical heavyweights. The helpful woman minding the church had binoculars we could use, which I did, perplexed by the mechanical-looking object in a saint's hand up in the lower register's tracery. It was a pair of pincers, with large tooth hovering mystically above them, in the hands of St. Apollonia.

We ate lunch at a delightful café called 7a Coffee Shop and Café, just across the street from the highly-rated restaurant Allium. 7a not only offered good freshly made sandwiches (I had a pesto chicken and parmesan toasted panino) and interesting drinks, but has a daily brownie menu! That day it featured seven brownie variants, ranging from chocolate chunk to mint Aero, but I was trying hard not to kill my appetite for dinner, and so didn't indulge.

On our way back to the car and our southbound voyage, we ran into the helpful woman from the church who smiled and nodded to us in recognition. It was almost like instantly becoming a local.

Train trip
The train from Manchester Oxford Road left from platforms 1, 2, and 3 - or so it was announced over the course of five minutes. By the end of those frantic minutes, we previously-silent passengers had bonded in shared train-catching anxiety.

Place that tune
The quiet elevator-style music in the background of the Indian restaurant was exceedingly familiar. I could sing along to it, so clearly I knew it. But where was it from? Then I realized - it was the soundtrack to Bombay Dreams; not something I ever thought I would hear done elevator-style.

( The Gondoliers at the ENO )

( Leonardo da Vinci at the V&A )

( Life in Renaissance Italy at the V&A )

Reunion
Canadian and British universities are still learning the fine art of cultivating alumni networks. Part of the art is instilling a belief in the importance of the network from the very beginning of the degree itself, before potential alums have come anywhere near graduating themselves. Another part of the art is to make all events personal, if possible

A month or so ago, I went to a University of Toronto reunion event. It was held in conjunction with another twenty-or-so Canadian universities in a large, chaotic room with mini chocolate bars to munch on; interaction largely revolved around game play, not a bad tactic given the numbers. In contrast, last night's meeting of the newly revitalized Smith Club of Great Britain was all about personal contact, tags labeled not just with names but years, canapes which encouraged lingering. Sure, the venue was a big noisy, in a corner of a bar, but the effect was still there. Also, it seemed as if all retired Smithies living in London have second homes in France. Not bad, really.

Favorite recent spam subject line: "And no equatorial"